Expectations For Godly Living-Part 3

EXPECTATIONS For GODLY LIVING-III—Titus 2:1-15

Attention:

Inside the massive effort to tackle one of America’s greatest rabies threats:

Rabies is caused by a virus known as Lyssavirus. There are different variants of the virus, that tend to be specific to certain animal hosts—like a variant that is specific to raccoons, another variant that is specific to skunks, & still another that is specific to bats, one to foxes, one to coyotes, etc. However, any rabies variant can infect any mammal!

Statistics show that raccoons are one of the number one species which carries rabies.

Raccoon rabies used to be confined to Florida & the Deep South prior to the 1970s. But, in 1977, more than thirty-five hundred raccoons were were legally trapped in Florida & shipped to private hunting clubs in Virginia, where they were released as prospective game.”

Those shipments brought ‘terrestrial raccoon-variant’ rabies north with them.

So far, the raccoon-variant rabies has stayed confined to the eastern part of the country. And for the last 20-some years, the U.S. has invested a lot of resources into making sure it stays that way.

The U.S. government has been distributing oral rabies vaccines targeted at raccoons since 1997. The effort is part of a massive public & animal health initiative, called the National Rabies Management Program. The program is the largest coordinated effort to control a zoonotic disease(transmitted from animals to humans) in wildlife populations ever undertaken in the U.S.

The program costs about $28 million to run every year, but it’s estimated to save taxpayers $60 million in preventing the need for public health investigations, animal rabies tests, & access to post-exposure vaccines for humans. The idea is that the fewer wild animals that have rabies, the less likely it is that people, pets, or livestock come into contact with the disease, which is 100 percent fatal if left untreated.

PITTSBURGH 2019:

Timothy Linder is a wildlife biologist with United States Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services. On a balmy morning in mid-August, Timothy lifts the latch on a refrigerated trailer & opens both doors wide, releasing a wave of cold air heavy with the stink of fish guts.

Linder puts on a pair of blue latex gloves, hoists himself up into the trailer, cuts into one of the stacks of cardboard boxes, & pulls out a plain brown block slightly larger than a miniature candy bar.

The plain brown block is for the raccoons.

“The candy bar-sized block is a fishmeal polymer block. Inside, each block is a sachet, like a little ketchup packet. The idea is that when a raccoon bites through the block, it simultaneously punctures the packet, & gets a liquid rabies vaccine in its mouth.”

Another type of rabies vaccine, ‘army-green, vanilla-flavored blister packets’, are distributed largely by airplane.

Months after each baiting, biologists start live-trapping raccoons to test their blood for rabies antibodies. If an animal has antibodies, it means the vaccines are working, & the more of them they find, the closer we get to eradication of rabies in the wild, at least among raccoons.

In 2019, the USDA & its partner agencies & organizations planned to distribute about 9.3 million raccoon rabies vaccine baits in a line, roughly 25 miles wide, that runs from Maine down to Alabama. Each bait-block is geo-cached as to it’s location. I don’t know the current status of their intent.

A 2016 study estimated that if the National Rabies Management Program were discontinued, it would take the raccoon rabies variant just twenty years to expand as far west as Wisconsin & Texas!

The bold ‘Expectation’ of the Rabies program is eradicate raccoon-borne rabies!

Likewise, there are bold ‘Expectations’ that go with committing yourself to God thru Jesus Christ!

Need:

There is an ultimate ‘fulfillment & satisfaction’ that CAN come to your life...That can BELONG to you...That you can POSSESS...That you can ‘BANK-ON’...That you can TRUST!

BUT such ‘fulfillment & satisfaction’ can ONLY come to you thru YOUR participation in GOD’s Expectations for Godly Living!

Titus was exhorted by the apostle Paul, to expose God’s people to the expectations for godly living.

All God’s people are answerable to His expectations for godly living.

What are some expectations for godly living by God’s people?

What are some expectations for godly living?

The last time we looked at Titus 2, we found:

Some expectations for godly living are...

1—APPROPRIATE DIRECTION(:1, 15)God’s direction thru apostolic authority

2—APPROPRIATE MATURITY(:2, :3-4, :4-5, :6-8)—

A.-OLDER MEN(i) & WOMEN(ii)(:2, 3-4)

•OLDER MEN—because they are responsible as Christian ‘heads’ of their families & churches.

•OLDER WOMEN—because they are responsible as Christian leaders, to love their families & to be teachers of God’s intended role for young Christian women.

*Today we’ll continue to flesh-out the ‘Godly Expectation’ of APPROPRIATE MATURITY(:2-8)....

....As it relates to B(i).-YOUNG Christian WOMEN(:3-4):